This section defines the rules for MPI language binding in
Fortran 77 and ANSI C.
Defined here are various object representations,
as well as the naming conventions used for expressing this
standard.

It is expected that any Fortran 90 and C++ implementations
use the Fortran 77 and ANSI C bindings, respectively.
Although we consider it premature to define other bindings to
Fortran 90 and C++, the current bindings are designed to encourage,
rather than discourage, experimentation with better
bindings that might be adopted later.

Since the word PARAMETER is a keyword in the Fortran language,
we use the word ``argument'' to denote the arguments to a
subroutine. These are normally referred to
as parameters in C, however, we expect that C programmers will
understand the word
``argument'' (which has no specific meaning in C), thus allowing us to avoid
unnecessary confusion for Fortran programmers.

There are several important language binding
issues not addressed by this standard.
This standard does not discuss the interoperability
of message passing between languages.
It is fully expected that good quality implementations will provide such
interoperability.
interoperability, language